Looking in The Mirror, Searing into Our Souls (Teenage depression)

Learning to live with yourself is one thing, but what if you really at the core don’t like the person staring back at you in the mirror? What if it is the person you are that is the problem leading to depression, and not just depression itself that leads you to problem?

Making that decision is one of the toughest decisions you will ever make, and not one that should be taken lightly. Being all that you can be is an easy thing to decide, but what if the character traits at your disposal in making that change aren’t enough? The thing about teenage depression is that it can make the view that we see reflected in the mirror a deplorable one. We can be disgusted with what we have not only become, but what in fact we always were.

If we see ourselves as weak, as ugly, as incapable of proper socialization, incapable of finding someone to love and incapable of enjoying what it means to be loved, then we are in a place that we need to get out of. A personality shift and a change in our physical appearance is not something that can happen overnight and thankfully so. Where the pace of change is steady we can still maintain control over the outcome. We can remove from our lives those things we are embarrassed by. If our hobbies are childish we can find more interesting and adult ones which will in turn make us more interesting adults.

If we feel weak, then we can build in ourselves through deep introspection and reading material that focuses on the character rebuild, a strength that can be enjoyed for the decades of our lives. Teenage depression leads us to character assassinate our own character, I am not eager to push people to change themselves when the core of the reason they feel so bad about themselves is the very depression that has taken them over, but there is never smoke without fire.

Depression is often a result of who we are, and where that person that we have become has led us to date. If it has led us to be living a miserable life, then it is only apt that by changing the essence of who we are into a person who is capable of a happier life, a solution is therein. In a theatre of war the army will take a group of young recruits and break them down to the core before rebuilding them as a group, the focus is on the team aspect, and the people come back from the low of being broken as stronger individuals. If a change is necessary in you then we can perhaps see a good thing from the effect of teenage depression.

Here the individual is broken down to the core, they are broken people, looking on the positive, at least the breaking down of the individual, that work has already transpired and that is half of the task. Now you are an intelligent person, and can see that I am very good at finding positives in even the worst of things, but in reality here there is an opportunity.

There is the opportunity to start the rebuilding process straight away, right now as the late Michael Jackson would say ‘I’m looking at the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to make a change’ take a good long look at yourself again, who do you want to come back as after this temporary fall into the pit of despair? Finding an idol, a role model, breaking down their personality type and finding ways to make the ‘new you’ similar to them, that is a useful start. Find all of the things that you like about them, and then through a careful rebuild process of the very traits that make up you as an individual, build into yourself a person who you would be proud of. Make it so that the person who stares back at you in the weeks and months from now, is one that you are happy to relate to and look in the eye.

Make your individual strong, it is true that going through depression in particular teenage depression leaves you coming out the other side stronger anyway, more resilient and thankful for the days where there are none of the negatives of depression.